The Doctor's Proposal (15 page)

‘I'm going.' The boots retreated. Steps retreating, stairs taken four at a time.

She went back to breathing. Went back to pounding. Breathe, then fifteen short, sharp thumps, breathe…

Come on. Come on.

Susie was in the doorway now, leaning heavily on her crutches. How had she got up the stairs? Behind her was Margie, and the twins behind her. Their faces were appalled.

‘Keep the littlies away,' she managed between breaths, but every ounce of energy was going into rhythmic pumping.

Jake was back then, pushing them unceremoniously aside, dumping equipment on the floor. A portable defibrillator. Thank God.

Please.

He worked around her, ripping Angus's pyjama jacket further, sticking on patches, readying…

Checking the monitor.

‘There's pulse,' he told her. ‘There's still pulse.'

‘But—'

‘It's slow as bedamned. Keep breathing for him, Kirsty.' He was hauling an oxygen mask from his kit. As he readied, Kirsty moved aside. In seconds Jake had the mask fitted and was breathing for him, pushing pure oxygen into Angus's lungs.

Kirsty didn't stop. They needed an IV. Sodium bicarb. Atropine…

What was happening?

Angus had ischaemic heart disease. She knew that. If his pulse hadn't completely gone then maybe this was a mild infarct. Maybe they'd get him back. That was the best-case scenario.

The thought that it could be a stroke with all its ramifications was unbearable.

Her fingers were flying. Jake had the old man's chest moving up and down with a reassuring rhythm. They just had to get him breathing for himself again. Maybe the sodium bicarb. could be enough to prevent any long-term damage.

If he still had a pulse… It must have just happened. Maybe he'd woken with the smell of bacon and the sound of voices in the kitchen. He must have stumbled. As Jake worked to set up an IV line, she was thinking all the time.

Please.

And then a tiny gasp, so small they might have imagined it. But then another. Another and a choking, gasping cough.

Breathing re-established. Breathing re-established!

Dear God.

The old eyes fluttered open. Angus winced as though in pain, and then seemed to focus. On Jake. On to Kirsty.

‘Sue…Susie,' he murmured, and Kirsty's eyes flew to the door. But her twin pre-empted her. Susie couldn't have heard Angus's whisper, but sometimes what was said to Kirsty was said to Susie, and Susie was already manoeuvring herself within Angus's field of vision.

‘I'm here, Angus.'

He stared up at her, bewildered. Trying to talk. ‘Shush,' Jake murmured, but he lifted the mask back so Angus could say what he obviously desperately wanted to say.

‘Stay safe,' Angus murmured at last. ‘Susie… Rory…'

‘I'm safe,' Susie said gently, and she laid her hand on her swollen belly, guessing the core of his fear. ‘Rory's baby is safe. We're worried about you.'

‘Spike,' he whispered. ‘He'll die…'

Kirsty even let herself smile at that. If he was worried about his pumpkin then surely there was hope. Surely there was a tomorrow for this gentle old man who she and her sister were only starting to know.

Who she and her sister were starting to love.

‘Susie will take care of your pumpkin,' Jake said softly, and by the look on his face Kirsty knew he was as emotional as she was. ‘She won't let him die. Meanwhile, Susie's come a long way to have this baby where you can play great-uncle, so you'd better make an effort for her. You're going to hospital.'

‘I'm not.' That was said so loudly, so indignantly that Kirsty wanted to laugh out loud. There were still miracles in this job. Sometimes—just sometimes—she loved being a doctor. To have this outcome…

‘Oh, yes, you are, you old coot,' Jake was saying, and there was no disguising the emotion in his voice now. ‘You're coming in for complete assessment, and that's an order. Do you really not want to be around to support Susie as she has her baby?'

‘I… No.' Kirsty was administering morphine. She could tell he was hurting—badly. Understandably. The way she'd pounded his ribs was enough to make anyone hurt.

‘Then you're coming to hospital.'

‘Spike,' Angus whispered, and closed his eyes.

‘I promise I'll look after your pumpkin,' Susie told him. ‘Me and Ben.'

‘Come on.' Jake stooped and lifted the old man into his arms, motioning to Kirsty to lift the various pieces of attached medical paraphernalia. ‘Kirsty, will you come with me?'

‘I can walk,' Angus said weakly.

‘Yeah, and I can fly,' Jake retorted. ‘But let's not do either unless we have to.'

T
WO
hours later Kirsty drove back to the castle in a borrowed hospital car, feeling as if maybe, just maybe things would be OK.

The electrocardiogram showed minor damage, as did the cardiac enzymes. Nothing that couldn't repair itself. Angus was sleeping, recovering from the combined effects of painkillers and shock, but his breathing was deep and almost normal.

‘He'll go to Sydney and get thorough cardiac assessment now,' Jake growled. ‘I haven't been able to get the stubborn old coot into this hospital before this, and I'm going to move so fast he won't know what hit him.' He hesitated. ‘Kirsty…'

‘You'd like me to go with him?'

His face cleared. ‘If you would. I'll take care of Susie for you.'

‘Of course you will,' she said softly, and then looked away.

Her job in a hospice at home was often heart-wrenching, but her heart had never been wrenched as it was now. What was it with this place, these people…this man?

She'd fallen in love with a whole community, she thought bleakly as she drove home, and she didn't know what to do about it. Because although she'd fallen for this place, she knew she could never separate the two. Her love for Dolphin Bay and its people.

Her love for Jake.

Maybe a couple of days away would be good for her, she thought. Jake was arranging for air ambulance to transport
Angus that afternoon and the plan was for her to accompany him. As his medical attendant—but also as his family.

Because that's what I am, like it or not, she admitted to herself. Family. Somehow this whole place has wrapped itself around my heart, and I don't know what to do about it.

Do what comes next and nothing more, she told herself fiercely. Go home. Reassure Susie and everyone else. Pack an overnight bag and go to Sydney. Stay there until you're sure Angus is out of danger.

Get away from Jake.

Right.

But when she drove into the castle forecourt there was more drama. She couldn't have time out just yet.

 

‘Spike's dying.'

Kirsty was barely out of the car door before Susie appeared from the gate leading to the kitchen garden. Boris was by her side, looking as concerned as Kirsty.

‘Kirsty, Spike's dying,' Susie yelled again. ‘Angus must have been trying to tell us…' She was balancing precariously on her crutches. As she saw her twin she took hasty steps forward—too hasty—and started to stagger. Kirsty reached her before she hit the ground.

‘Jake phoned,' her sister said. ‘He said Angus would be OK and you were going to Sydney. Everyone left and then I came out to see. Kirsty, Spike—'

‘Susie, calm down.'

‘I'm calm, but—'

‘You're not calm. Be sensible. Where's everyone else?'

Susie took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, obviously fighting for composure. ‘Ben's gone home to water his own vegetables. Margie says that's the first place he goes when he's upset. Then when Jake phoned and said he wanted you to go to Sydney, Margie said she'd shop now as she doesn't want me to be alone for too long, and after you go I will be. So she and
the twins have gone into town. But when they left…' Her voice broke on a sob.

‘Hey, hush.' Kirsty put her hand on her twin's, trying to stem what sounded like rising hysteria. ‘It's OK.'

‘But it's not,' Susie sobbed. ‘I know why Angus had his heart attack. He must have seen. When they left I went to check. Angus and I cleared all the leaves near the pumpkin, leaving the stem exposed. Someone's pulled it. They've hauled the roots right out of the ground. I've replanted him, but it'll take days for his roots to re-establish themselves. He's wilting while I watch.'

 

The pumpkin was indeed poorly. Kirsty's specialty was dying people, not pumpkins—but she knew a dying pumpkin when she saw one. If she'd been selecting pumpkins for a hospice, Spike might well have met her criteria.

He wasn't totally limp. Some of the leaves closer to the roots were still stiff and healthy, but the leaves close to the pumpkin itself were visibly wilting. Susie had rigged up a sheet to give shade. She'd soaked the ground with water, so the patch was sodden, but obviously not enough water was getting through.

‘Someone's wrenched him out of the ground,' Susie whispered. ‘I guess we were lucky the whole plant didn't break off, but as it is, Spike can't get water and he'll die.'

‘Won't it ripen anyway?' Kirsty said doubtfully—and received the look she'd used not so long ago on a junior intern who'd suggested using aspirin for renal colic.

‘It's too soon. He'll get bigger before he ripens. If he's picked now he'll never be any good. This must have been why Angus had his attack. He'll have looked out the window and been rushing to help. Who can have done such a thing?' Susie sank onto the wet ground and lifted the main stem into her hands. ‘This will break Angus's heart. The damaged roots can't supply enough water to get through.'

Kirsty opened her mouth to say something, and then she stopped.

No. What she was thinking had to be dumb.

‘What?' Susie said. ‘Why is it dumb?'

‘You know, Jake does this to me, too, now,' Kirsty complained. ‘Can't a girl even think by herself?'

‘Jake loves you as much as I love you,' Susie retorted. ‘He just doesn't know it yet. What's dumb?'

Ignore the Jake comment, Kirsty told herself. Concentrate on important matters. Like dying pumpkins.

She was a palliative-care physician. Her specialty was taking care of the dying. Not lifesaving. So far today she'd helped save Angus and now… Could she save a pumpkin? A medical step sideways.

‘I was thinking…'

‘I know you were thinking,' Susie said, exasperated. ‘But you need to stop thinking and do something or the pumpkin's cactus.'

‘You know, palliative-care doctors don't use the word cactus,' she said thoughtfully, her mind still racing. ‘It's not a good image.'

‘Spike will die, then,' Susie said, sounding even more exasperated. And fearful. She'd fallen for Angus in a big way, Kirsty thought. Angus was Rory's uncle and he was therefore Susie's family.

If Angus was Susie's family then Angus was therefore her family. And his pumpkin was heading toward being…cactus.

‘Is it just water that's flowing through the stem?' she asked cautiously.

‘Yes.'

‘Ordinary water?'

‘There'll be nutrients as well,' Susie said. ‘From the soil. But that's not as important as water.'

Kirsty knelt beside her twin and examined the pumpkin with care. Susie's replanting had worked a little. The leaves closet to the ground were still firm. The wilting leaves were the furthest from the roots, and they were turning more limp by the minute.

‘I can't bear it,' Susie moaned. ‘How can we tell Angus?'

‘Shut up, Suze.' She was examining the stem. It looked tough and prickly. Like a hairy forearm?

‘Let's not bury him yet,' she said softly. ‘Suze, if you cut off a flower and stick it in a vase it'll suck up water. If you cut this stem and stuck it in water, would it suck it up?'

‘The pumpkin will draw water in,' Susie told her. ‘But it'd never get enough. And the stem would disintegrate in two or three days, leaving us no better off.'

‘But if we could bleed water into the stem…' Kirsty said cautiously. ‘Maybe via an IV line. Just until the roots recover.'

There was a moment's silence. ‘Oh,' said Susie on a note of discovery. And then, ‘Oh-h-h.'

‘I'm not sure if it'd work,' Kirsty warned.

‘It'd be better than sitting watching him die.'

‘And he might get infection from the IV site.'

‘There's stuff you put on pruned branches to stop infection.' Susie's despair had suddenly evaporated, transforming into excitement. ‘Do you have what you need to put in an intravenous line?'

‘Jake's lent me a hospital car. It's the one they take out to emergencies when they need back-up. There's an emergency kit in the back. There has to be an IV kit.'

‘Then what are we waiting for?'

 

‘You've done what?' On the end of the line Jake sounded incredulous. He'd rung to tell Kirsty the plane was due to take off at two, and he'd got a step-by-step account of their medical procedure from an excited Susie. But Susie had been too excited to make sense. She'd handed the phone over to Kirsty and gone back outside to continue supervision of their patient.

‘We've set up an IV line on Spike,' Kirsty said, trying not to sound smug. ‘We used a tiny cannula and we're running straight saline at the rate of 80 mil per hour. The leaves closest to Spike are already starting to stiffen. Believe it or not, it might just work.'

‘You're kidding me.'

‘You're not the only doctor who can be a generalist when the case requires it,' she told him, giving up on the smug bit. She felt smug. Why not admit it?

‘No.' There was a moment's silence. ‘Kirsty, do you know how the pumpkin came to be pulled out?'

Kirsty's smugness faded. ‘I can't imagine,' she said slowly. ‘Maybe…Boris digging?'

‘Does it look like Boris has been digging?'

‘No.' And suddenly she knew what he was thinking. What she would have thought of if Susie hadn't been so traumatised. Only someone wishing to do enormous ill to Angus would do such a thing.

‘Who's there now?' Jake was demanding.

‘Me and Susie.'

‘Go inside and lock the doors. I'm coming home.'

 

He was being paranoid, Kirsty thought. OK, Kenneth might well be responsible for an uprooted pumpkin. He'd know how much the pumpkin meant to Angus and it'd be an easy way to hurt him. But as for locking themselves in…

But then she remembered the way Kenneth had looked at Susie and suddenly she stopped thinking Jake was paranoid.

Susie had been inside having a drink when the phone had rung, but she hadn't been able to stay in. She'd returned to the veggie patch, Boris beside her.

Kirsty made her way back there now. Jake was being over-cautious, she told herself. There was no danger.

She rounded the hedge and Kenneth was there. With Susie.

Kenneth was pointing a gun straight at her sister's head.

 

From heat to icy cold, just like that. The world stilled.

In her nice safe hospice back in nice safe Manhattan Kirsty had an emergency beeper she carried in her pocket, linked to the security service for the main hospital. She'd never used it.

She ached for her beeper right now.

‘Kenneth,' she said sharply to distract him, trying to haul that pointing arm away from Susie. Susie was leaning heavily on her crutches, looking ill.

‘You're her,' Kenneth said indistinctly, and those two words told Kirsty a lot. They told her that he was ill—his speech was slurred and wary. They told her he was desperate. And they told her that the twin thing was confusing him.

‘Who are you?' he demanded.

‘I'm Susie,' Kirsty said desperately into the stillness. His finger was around the trigger and she felt sick. ‘I'm Rory's wife.'

‘No.' He had that right at least. The gun firmed, levelled now at Susie's belly. ‘She's the one. She's pregnant. And I've looked it up again. Everything's entailed. The old man dies and the kid gets everything. The title, the land back in Scotland, even most of this place. I'm screwed.' He focused again on Susie. ‘I came this morning to make you sorry. I saw the pumpkin and I knew how much the old man loved it and I was right, wasn't I? The shock nearly killed him. They've carted him off with a heart attack and any minute now he'll be dead and what's his will be mine. I've just got to get rid of you.'

‘Angus isn't dying,' Kirsty said urgently, but she was ignored.

‘I thought when I killed Rory that it'd be easy.'

Dear God. Kirsty saw Susie's face blench and she thought her twin might fall over. She took an involuntary step forward, but the gun waved in her direction and she stilled again.

‘That's right,' he snarled. ‘You thought it was an accident, didn't you? You all did. It was too damned easy. I knew he was married and I had to move fast. But that place where you lived… All I had to do was fiddle with the steering. You know how easy it is to slice through steering rods? Bash it so it looks like it's been damaged in the past. Cut it almost through and then wait. I hoped you'd both die, but when it was only Rory I didn't care. But I might have known you'd be pregnant.'

‘You won't get away with it this time, though,' Kirsty said, trying frantically to keep her voice calm. Controlled. ‘You shoot Susie and you'll have a nationwide manhunt starting right now. Kenneth, leave us be. Just go while you can.'

‘I'm not shooting you,' he said. ‘You think I'm stupid?'

‘I think you're pointing a gun at us.'

‘And I'll shoot you if I have to,' he told her. ‘I'd rather we were all dead than Rory's kid gets the old man's wealth. Rory'd still win that way. But I've set up a better way and you're in it, too, regardless of who the hell you are.'

‘You're not going to shoot us?' Anything to keep the attention from Susie, she thought. How long would it take Jake to get there? Too long. She couldn't keep him talking.

‘I've fixed it,' he told her, almost triumphant. ‘I came here this morning and saw everyone and thought the only way to go was get her…' the gun waved again to Susie ‘…on her own. Make it seem like an accident. So I rigged the boat and came back.'

‘The boat.'

‘Down the cliff,' he told her. ‘Move.'

‘Susie can't climb down the cliff. Susie can barely walk.'

‘That's where you come in, then,' he snarled. ‘You get her down the cliff or I take her to the steep bit and push her over. Move. Both of you. Now!'